On Guitars

I'd much rather have a better guitar than a better amp, more guitars than more amps. The guitar is where I make the music, it is the object that I connect with. The amp is not irrelevant, but the guitar is just that tiny bit more important to me. I spend quite a bit of time practicing unplugged, so the actual tone of the instrument is quite significant to my decision process. I am also convinced that if I can make a good sound of the unplugged guitar, then what comes out of the amp will be even better.

Early in my playing career, I got stuck on the idea that there are four classic rock guitars, and even discovering heavy metal didn't change that in the long run. This guided most of my purchases, and it is only in my middle age that I've started looking further afield. Naturally, much of this goes back to my formative years, when I developed my musical taste as well as my preferences as a player.

The most important point is that I'm into the classic designs more than vintage guitars per se. Vintage guitars are cool to look at in photos. The battle scars give them a deep sense of history, of having been loved and played and brought to all these shows.

I much prefer buying a modern implementation of a classic design, and then presiding over the weathering process myself. The more time I spend with my guitars as well as trying others in stores and at shows, the more I find myself gravitating towards the newer models. I have long been a proponent of Fender's American Standard range, and more recently I have started to get more interested in the Gibson Modern range of guitars. I enjoy the idea of a vintage design with modern appointments. Just keep the robot tuners to yourself, please.

Fender Telecaster

When I see a Telecaster, I cannot help but think that out of all the time that Leo spent designing this guitar, surely he cannot have dedicated more than five minutes to how the thing was going to look. It's not much more than a bandsawn plank of wood, with a roughly hewn guitar neck bolted onto it, with two pickups just to get a sound out of it. The pickguard is cut off halfway, then there's the chrome plate with the controls just sticking out there, and the weird ashtray with bridge saddles and the rear pickup. It is surprisingly heavy and the absence of comfort contouring makes it quite uncomfortable to play. In sharp contrast to the curvaceous Stratocaster, the Tele comes off as positively plain and workmanlike.

It is exactly those features that make the Telecaster so desirable. It just oozes attitude, speaking plainly, if not bluntly. That bridge pickup is simply amazing: pure, assertive, bright, spanky, and sits just right in any mix. The Tele doesn't help you in the least. It showcases your articulation and technique, warts and all. You'd better keep your chops up or you'll be seriously humbled. At the same time, if you coax it just right, you will be able to get sounds out of it that are both subtle and delicate.

I have been guilty of dismissing the Tele as a lesser or unfinished Strat, but that is deeply unfair, and I soon learned better. As soon as I got one, it became clear that I didn't miss any of the Strat-specific sounds or features when I was playing the Tele. But I did miss a thing or two when playing the Strat.

My Telecaster is a maple-neck 2008 American Standard with an ash body in 2-tone sunburst. If it's not my most beautiful guitar, then it's right up there. It is also just about my best-sounding guitar unplugged. There is a firmness and chewiness to the midrange that makes it a wonderful experience to play without an amp. Most importantly, this is a guitar that just delivers. I haven't done a bad gig with it, and I've never picked it up and not nailed the take. It just delivers, time after time.

The only modification I've made is to switch out the pickups for noiseless DiMarzios, the Area T set. At first, I even went so far as to equip it with a Super Distortion T in the bridge. For the sort of cover gigs I was doing at the time, it was a perfect combo, as the hotter bridge pickup allowed a huge range of expressions. But once I got out of that, the pickup got changed into something more traditional and I haven't looked back since.

Fender Stratocaster

The Strat wasn't the first guitar I desired, and it's neck to neck with the Les Paul for the status as my favorite. But it was the first electric that I owned and there's only been four years of my playing career when I haven't owned at least one. If I could only pick one type of guitar to play for the rest of my life, this is probably it. It really is perfect.

I like to think of the Strat as a 21st-century instrument that accidentally fell into the 1950s. It is a marvelous piece of design, like it's somehow the pinnacle of 70 years of electric guitar evolution rather than one of the first models ever made. Somehow, it doesn't seem to age, it looks as contemporary now as it did back then. How many other consumer products have been essentially unchanged since 1954? Outside of the music industry, none come to mind.

It's not just good looks either. Nothing on the model is form over function. It is a supremely comfortable guitar. No matter if I sit or stand, it just melds into my body and just about disappears. Changing strings and making adjustments is a breeze, and even more drastic modifications are dead easy, as the entire pickguard, with all the electronics, can be lifted right out of the body without even removing the strings.

Both my Strats are from what I consider to be the golden age of the American Standard, when the line had the perfect combination of a vintage look and modern features. The yellow one is a 1996 model in Vintage White, with a rosewood fretboard. It was a custom order that the other guy didn't pick up because he had ordered it with a maple neck. I would agree, because I prefer the look of a maple neck on a Fender (hardly any other guitar, though). But this axe happens to be one of the few that actually looks better with the rosewood.

My blue Strat is technically an American Series instrument, made in 2002, finished in Sonic Blue and with a maple neck. It was basically a substitute for my old blue Yngwie Strat that I got back in 1991 and stupidly traded away the year after that. It is the perfect compromise because I wasn't really after the Yngwie features. I just think that that color and that neck represent the most beautiful combination in the entire Fender range. The top coat has yellowed a bit in 20+ years, so it is turning more green than blue. But it's still a very pleasing color, it's a maple-neck Strat, and it has one of the nicest necks in my collection.

The yellow Strat has been a veritable test bed for pickup configurations, but about ten years ago I finally landed in a setup that I just love. It has three DiMarzio Area 58 stacked humbuckers, a wonderful pickup that is bright and delicate and with just the right amount of Strat snappiness. The blue one still has the stock pickups, but I'm seriously considering getting a new pickguard for it, in the HH configuration, probably with DiMarzio Super Distortion and PAF Pro full-size humbuckers, for those classic 80s tones. I really want a Strat in every color, but realistically, if I have to have two, then they should at least differ somewhat from each other like my Les Pauls do.

Gibson Les Paul

I have seldom felt more stumped than the first time I sat down with a Les Paul. It was small, thick, heavy and unbalanced. After playing Strats for all those years, the Les Paul felt like its opposite in many respects: arched top, strings far from the body, angled neck and an even more angled headstock. I was confused and lost and had to fight off a distinct sense of disappointment.

That didn't last long. I soon plugged it into a Marshall combo, and had a completely life-altering experience. I had no idea that I could play that well, with such gusto and fluidity. From that moment on, I knew that I just had to have a Les Paul. But at the same time, I couldn't just get one. I got the extremely silly notion that I had to deserve a Les Paul. Obviously that's the invention of a child's mind, but as with many such things, it finds ways to keep resonating even as one approaches middle age.

The first Les Paul I bought was this black 1990 Studio model that I found used in 2001. Getting it was one of those magical moments, definitely one of the happiest days of my musical life. Since then I've played it on countless recordings, done a number of gigs and spent thousands of hours practicing and noodling on it at home. It is truly an extension of my body, my number one guitar, and it's never let me down. I know that if all else fails, I can just grab my black Les Paul and nail the take. Sometimes I'll deliberately avoid it in order to not make things too easy.

There is not much on my black Studio that is still original. The pickup rings have been cracked for years and are overdue for replacement, and I have already done so with the pickup switch ring and knob, the jack plug plate, and the tuners. The pickguard is still around, but I lost the mounting screws for it many years ago. In 2011, I had a tech swap the original pickups for DiMarzio PAF 36th Anniversary humbuckers with black-chromed covers. I have been very happy with the sound, and the black chrome makes the guitar look menacing as hell.

My second Les Paul is a 2016 60s Tribute in Honeyburst. I consider it more of a mounting system for two P-90 pickups. The P-90 is simply amazing. Both pickups together through a Fender-style amp might very well be the nicest clean sound I have ever played with. Then I discovered along the way that putting some dirt on the bridge pickup and turning up to 11 is just glorious. Two things immediately became obvious: the P-90 might have been invented back in '46, but it is not going anywhere, and: heavy metal was in fact invented on a P-90.

I was always into sunburst Standards or black or white Customs. For a while, my black Studio felt like a stopgap measure, like something I could cut my teeth on until I get a "real" Gibson. I got out of that. I would sit down and play the aforementioned upper-echelon models, and come away slightly bummed, like, "is that all there is?" None of the more expensive Les Pauls had the slick black ebony fretboard of my Studio, or the wonderfully silky control knobs.

Gibson SG

I have always enjoyed the Gibson SG because it looks cool as hell, especially in black. It is perhaps no accident that it was an SG that helped invent heavy metal. It seemed predestined to achieve something like that, given the sharp horns and the attitude. At the same time, an SG definitely does not look out of place on a regular rock or blues stage. It is a chameleon.

Another reason why I've always had a soft spot for the Gibson SG is that it is specifically not a Les Paul. It's a little more obscure, not nearly as cliché, and, perhaps most importantly, has never sold for rockstar prices. More to the point, it is slightly more practical than its older sister, with the same pickups and electronics in a much nimbler package. It has more fret access than frets, a bigger body, and doesn't look quite as ridiculous on someone who's closer to seven than six feet tall. My two Gibsons have this yin/yang thing going, where I lean heavily on the Les Paul for studio work, but always bring the SG to a rehearsal.

My SG is a black 2005 Standard that I bought used in 2012. It has remained stock ever since then. There are times when I want to give it the DiMarzio treatment as well, but I very much like the way it sounds. If it ain't broke, and so on. Because of the thinner body and no maple cap, it has more attitude than the Les Paul. I especially like the flutey, delicate tone of the neck pickup.

It might just be a setup issue, but I have found that my SG is a lot less tolerant to rough playing than the Les Paul. Indeed, the lighter the touch, the easier it is to make it sing, which is something I have to be really mindful of. The rather tubby D-shaped neck also bothered me for quite a while, until I got my seven-string, whereupon all my sixes felt really small and nimble.

PRS Guitars

If not for that one thing, I would likely have dismissed PRS guitars outright as way above my league. That one thing was that I happened to try one at an early and impressionable age, and was completely blown away. I thought my Strat was smooth. This was some next-level stuff.

I stayed away from PRS for many years. First it was because there was just no way I would ever be able to afford one. Then it was that I associated them intimately with nu-metal and post-grunge, not exactly an image or a sound that is to my taste. Getting into Opeth and seeing Åkerfeldt, Lindgren and then Åkesson with them did wonders. After that, it was only a matter of overcoming my resistance to overseas-made guitars. As soon as I did so, the PRS SE range has been a perennial favorite of mine, and I've purchased two of those guitars in the last decade.

The ultimate PRS as far as I'm concerned is the original gangster, the Custom 24. It's like someone took the best bits of a Strat and a Les Paul and combined them in one superbly playable and classy-looking guitar. It has the dual-humbucker layout that I much prefer, with a coil-split for more options, and solves a number of ergonomic problems that still plague the classic Fender and Gibson designs.

I just don't own one—yet. I got into PRS around the time I was looking for some kind of 80s-style shred guitar, a notion that morphed into wanting to get into seven-string playing. I couldn't convince myself to throw myself into the seven-string world at the time, but instead someone put the SE 277 baritone in my hands, and I just refused to let it go. The regular 277 is a dual-humbucker guitar with a flame top. Mine has two P-90-style soapbars and a natural ebony top that simply has to be seen to be believed; it is a work of art.

I bought the baritone to be a bit player, a guitar for experimenting, for that textural part on one or two songs, but above all for cleaner stuff. It soon came to dominate the proceedings completely. It drove two of the three tracks in the last Namlar recording project, and almost immediately became my main guitar in GNH. It sounds and feels like nothing else, and is easily one of my favorite guitars. The only thing I don't like about it is that it is surprisingly sensitive to environmental changes, more akin to an acoustic. That, however, can be worked around, and I did learn much from the experience.

After a couple of years on the baritone, I was looking for some kind of backup, and took the opportunity to finally get into seven-string playing. It is tricky finding a proper seven-string. They're fairly niche and above all very metal on a level that just doesn't fit the image that I want to project for myself or GNH. I wanted a dual-humbucker guitar with passive pickups, fretboard markers and that wasn't a signature model. There is no such a thing, so in the end I compromised and bought the PRS SE Mark Holcomb signature SVN. Before doing so, I had to check up on Mark as well as Periphery, and discovered a new great band in the process.

My previous experiences with seven-strings had given me the impression that getting into them was going to be a nightmare. In fact, it was surprisingly easy. The way my brain is wired, I found that it was actually a lot easier once I started alternating six and seven. It could be that my many years of constantly jumping back and forth between several different types of guitars have paid off. I always thought my many years on six-strings would cause problems with the low B, then that my increasing reliance on the baritone would mess things up on the upper strings. In reality, the thing I struggle the most with is the middle part: the G, D and A strings. It has given me some deep thoughts about how I visualize the neck and how my muscle memory and hand/eye coordination are calibrated, and that's been fascinating.

The SVN sounds and feels good enough that I'm sorely tempted to forego the Custom 24 and instead get a Holcomb six-string whenever I decide to expand the collection. From an ergonomic standpoint, it makes more sense: Mark's signature guitar as an extra 0.5 inches of scale length, splittable pickups that I know I enjoy immensely, and, most importantly, comes with a fixed bridge.

Acoustic Guitars

I don't play much acoustic guitar anymore, which is a crying shame. There is something pure and essential about fingerpicking a good steel-string. But the minute I started putting together an actual collection of electrics, and more importantly putting them through practice amps, the impetus for playing a lot of acoustic kind of disappeared.

I've also never been good at caring for my acoustics. Actually, it's on the level where I am kind of relieved that Sweden doesn't have instrument cruelty laws. I had to scrap my old 12-string Yamaha, because the Swedish winters basically killed it. I didn't realize that one shouldn't put an acoustic guitar six feet from an open balcony door in the middle of a Scandinavian winter.

If I had known that it was the lack of maintenance rather than the lack of quality that did my acoustics in, things would obviously have transpired quite differently. But as it happened, I learned something the hard way, and by the way also got to discover Taylor guitars in the process.

I currently own two Mexican-made Taylors: a six-string grand auditorium 214, and a 12-string dreadnought 150e. Both of these represent amazing tone, feel and build quality for the money. I think I tried out 50 different acoustics before narrowing it down to the 214. It wasn't the best one I tried, that distinction belongs to the Martin GPCPA-3, but in the end I decided that that extra sizzle in the top end wasn't worth more than twice the price. Especially since it was soon proven that even a better guitar didn't make me want to play more acoustic.